Monday, 10 January 2011

Sarah Palin website "Target List" of Democrats designated for removal in November 2010 mid-term elections, with cross-hairs specifying target locations; taken down on 9 January 2011 after the shooting of Arizona Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (whose name appears fourth from top, left column of list): photo by Splash News, via Daily Mail, 10 January 2011

Sarah Palin buys a gun at a shop in Wasilla, Alaska, in a scene from her reality show, Sarah Palin's Alaska: photo by Scope Features, via Daily Mail, 10 January 2011

Sarah Palin aims a gun in the direction of a camera in another scene from her reality show: photo by Splash News, via Daily Mail, 10 January 2011

Well, er, Ed... that reminds me of the time I was bodyguarding for Harry S. Truman... not to mention Madame Chiang Kai-Shek...

(Oh well, no big deal, I was just an usher at a political convention in Chicago... they didn't have those bulletproof glass shields in those days... but of course at that age one considered oneself bulletproof anyway... though one of my colleagues did buckle to his knees after being hit in the forehead with a brick... )

Truman, the little haberdasher (Olson, when working in govt, had once dubbed HST and his wing of the party machine "merchandise men"), had scraped his way to the top in American politics largely on the strength of his military and Masonic Lodge connections (he was the Grand Master of the Missouri lodge of Freemasons), and got himself remembered by history mainly for having remarked that he had felt "no regrets" about nuking Japanese cities.

Ah, blithe days.

At that convention, though he and Madame CK-S were prominently featured celebs, he was little more than that, a prop; he was backing Harriman, but as he was no longer "sitting president," he could do little to prevent the nomination of Stevenson, who was unaffectionately known back then as "The Egghead".

(The pinheaded moronic regressivism of American aw-shucks just-folks I love-my-weaponry political attitudes did not, of course, begin in that Alaska gunshop or on SP's Facebook page.)

Madame Chiang Kai-shek (Soong may-ling), on the other hand, seemed like a slightly classier act, rather aloof, dolled up in one of those cool cheongsam deals.

From Huffington Post, 1/10/2011"Within an hour of Saturday's tragic shooting in Arizona, the Twittersphere had quickly seized on a map put out by Sarah Palin's political action committee last year that had gun-sight images over the congressional districts of House Democrats she wanted to win for the GOP in 2010.

Among her targets: Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, who was critically wounded by a gunman Saturday. His motives, authorities say, are not fully known. But friends of the suspect, Jared Loughner, have suggested that he had held a grudge for at least three years against Giffords dating back to when he met her in 2007.

Still, some believe that incendiary rhetoric like Palin's bears some responsibility in the tragedy. Giffords herself had previously raised concerns about Palin's map: "The way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have got to realize there are consequences to that action."

The Right Wingers and Media keep obfuscating the causes and effects that preceded this assassination attenpt. Obviously the vitriolic rhetoric towards Obama, Healthcare and ANYTHING he worked to change, was geared to catch the attention and exploit mental cases just like the man who shot Giffords and 18 other people, with many killed.

Palin, like Limbaugh was at the forefront of those efforts and any attempt to separate Palin's ongoing M.O. from the shooting of Giffords is deliberate political/media tunnel vision and double talk.

“When people get close together, they get more and more savage, impatient with each other,” McLuhan said. “The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations.” Placing that in a more contemporary milieu, what happens now that everyone is a broadcaster? Ubiquitous, cheap technology (digital cameras) and a friction-free route to an audience (YouTube) means that people might broadcast images of their closeted gay roommate having sex, and that the unwitting star of their little network might subsequently, tragically, jump off a bridge.MARSHALL MCLUHANYou Know Nothing of My Work!By Douglas Coupland216 pp. Atlas & Company. $24Multimedia

Congenial Oaktown street hopper, between jail stints at the time, last spring, when AZ was getting all that publicity for its cheerfully institutionalized racism, said, "Aw, Arizona, I been to Arizona... but only for one day... brother can't afford to let the sun go down on him in Arizona."